


M1N3, C4A7T Manhunt

by Kat_Klaudia



Category: Minecraft (Video Game), Minecraft Manhunt - Fandom, mcyt
Genre: Alternate Universe, Betrayal, Broken Friendship, Character Death, Enemies to Lovers, Eventual Romance, Flashbacks, M/M, Minecraft Manhunt, POV Clay | Dream (Video Blogging RPF), POV GeorgeNotFound (Video Blogging RPF), Pining, Slow Burn, Virtual Reality
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-31
Updated: 2021-01-31
Packaged: 2021-03-17 06:34:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,496
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29095857
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kat_Klaudia/pseuds/Kat_Klaudia
Summary: Dream has found himself trapped inside a Virtual world where his best friend, Sapnap, is trying to kill him. With one single life and only a slim hope from the code provided to him about the predicament he's in, he must defeat six dragons without dying. It's kind of hard not to die with a man who always seems to find him and attacks with the intent to kill.It only gets harder when Sapnap decides he needs help.But with this added assistance, could Dream find himself a possible ally? What about the enemies he already has? Why is he trapped there in the first place with a once trusted friend gone rogue?What happens when the male gets distracted from the task on hand?“You haven’t gotten any…” He hadn’t even had to finish his sentence before Nick shook his head sympathetically.“No, it’s only you. Dave still hasn’t figured out why you’re experiencing those. It could be permanent damage to your brain, though. He might have to pull you out of the project.”“He’ll have to pry my cold, dead body out of it.” Clay joked lightly, but Nick did not laugh.“Yeah, man.”
Relationships: Clay | Dream/GeorgeNotFound (Video Blogging RPF)
Kudos: 13





	1. Trapped and Afraid

**Author's Note:**

> Hi! This is just a fanwork I am doing for fun, and I am taking the CC's in this story's personalities as the ones they show ONLINE. In no way do the characters in this story relate to them in real life, this is FICTION. Anyways, this is my first time writing something like this, so I hope you enjoy! Do not repost my work please!

Heavy breathing.

Sweat trickled down Dream’s face as he launched himself over the wide gap at the edge of the cliff, his body colliding with a tree. The thick branches were able to support his weight, luckily, and he soon heard a panicked yell from behind him and a prominent  _ thump  _ against the ground. His stomach rumbled hungrily, but he didn’t let that deter him. Launching himself off the leafy branches and onto the next tree, his arms gripped a thick branch as he tugged himself up and on top of it.

“Come here, Dream!” Came the familiar scream from down below and Dream winced, the ceramic smiley mask over his face did a good job at hiding that action. He still wasn't used to the violent undertone in his best friend’s voice, the undertone that indicated his intentions were to  _ kill  _ him. 

Quickly, Dream launched himself towards the next tree, but had drastically misjudged the distance and missed the branch just  _ barely _ , crashing to the grassy ground with a painful crack. By now, his body had multiple scratches and fresh bruises littering it, and he was getting dizzier by the second. The sound of somebody stumbling after him, crashing through the underbrush, proved that his pursuer was not doing any better.

_ Come on, Dreamy, _ the man thought with gritted teeth as he pushed himself up.  _ You’ve just gotta get away from him for a little bit and figure this whole situation out. Find some food, heal up, and get some gear. _ With a pained groan, he pushed himself into a sprint and disappeared into the forest, the sounds of pursuit becoming fainter and fainter with each step. 

This wasn't supposed to happen.

Gasps left the blond as he huddled inside a cave that was dimly lit with the torches he had created from various tools gathered along the way. A soft crackling could be heard from across Dream’s huddled form, a furnace offering most of the light that allowed the man to see, cooking him some pork chops he had gotten from a few unsuspecting pigs outside the entrance of said cave. With a sour face, Dream had to force his thoughts away from a certain somebody. 

How had this happened? He asked himself silently, eyes trailing across the blood trickling down his arms, his eye swollen from smacking against a tree branch during his frantic run. The most concerning wound he had though, was a slash across the male’s back that had ripped open his lime green hoodie. The slash was too wide and too deep to have been created from a sword. 

_ I taught you that. _ The male spat inside his head,  _ I taught you that an axe was a more effective weapon if you wanted to go for higher damage at a time.  _

With tremendous pain, the male slowly reached towards the dimming furnace and plucked out three pork chops from within, each a yellowed pale color from it’s time cooking. He hastily shoved one into his mouth and swallowed after a few chews, sighing in relief as the scratches along his arms, legs, and face began to slowly seal themselves. He had regained some of his energy, but despite this he shoved another pork chop into his mouth. 

_ Let’s recount what happened,  _ the male decided with a saddened sigh. The huge slice on his back slowly began to seal up as well. The skin surrounding his eye stopped its throbbing, and eventually there was no irritation left. 

Sapnap, his best friend, was currently trying to kill him and was stacked with diamond armor and diamond tools. That axe had nearly killed him, added with the fall damage from his unsuccessful jump to that tree.  _ A diamond juggernaut _ , he thought bitterly. The male must’ve spawned in with the items hidden away inside his inventory. That was why Dream had not seen his attack coming sooner. 

This was supposed to be a simple test run of the newest update in Project M1N3, C4A7T. His best friend had offered to join him this time, and he obliged. 

Dream thought that he could teach Sapnap more about this Project, how to better understand and use the physics of this ga- of this program to become more agile and stronger than his physical body. With enough practice, Sapnap would easily be able to become as comfortable in these worlds as Dream was, and just as skilled. 

Adding up the hours, Dream had spent  _ weeks _ with his mind inside this project, practicing, working, having  _ fun _ , changing only tidbits, small tidbits of the world’s coding to see what he could do. He understood every statistic of the coding and could anticipate the capabilities of their avatars in gam- in this project. Like jumping. He knew that no matter how hard you pushed in a jump, there was a limit to how far you traveled in the air. This was designed to make people seem more  _ human _ , to avoid super humans and remain as similar to reality as possible. Of course you could do weaker jumps, but they had put that there as a sort of safety tether.

_Project M1N3, C4A7T._ At the thought of the virtual world he was currently trapped in, the male lifted his hand and faced the palm upwards. A grey, 2D box appeared over it, holding a text wall of code that stretched onward for ages as he scrolled through its content. He already knew he couldn’t leave, he had found that little chunk of added code that **_he_** must have put there while Dream hadn’t been looking. 

What an idiot Dream had been. How had he not realized sooner? Now that he thought back, the intentions were so  _ obvious _ . Looking through the code more thoroughly, the blond became disheartened when he noticed a certain chunk. It revolved around Dream’s character, and Dream’s character only. Unlike Sapnap, he had one single life. 

In the Project, they had found that people could  _ feel  _ pain, through their mind. They could  _ die  _ with no repercussions and simply be reborn. A little traumatized, yes, but undoubtedly fine. With more fiddling, they created a line of code that would permanently kill somebody’s brain when their avatar died only once. This code quickly became forbidden, and Dream was a little grateful that was one of the only times he had not volunteered for testing out that update. They lost a valuable employee that day.

Unwillingly, the man’s thoughts trailed to the angry face of his best friend.

“ _ Sapnap… _ ” he whispered hoarsely. “ _ Why? _ ” That was something Dream had to find out. Why his best friend had attempted to kill him. He probably knew of the forbidden code locked onto Dream’s avatar. 

Did he know about the code that prevented anybody who entered this world from leaving?

_ Why?,  _ was all that passed through Dream’s mind for a long while, his thoughts drifting back to the before.

_ “Hey, man,” A grin stretched across Clay’s face at the voice and he looked over his shoulder to meet eyes with his best friend, Nick.  _

_ “Hey,” he greeted back, turning forward to make sure he wouldn’t bump into anybody as he walked down the pristine hallway of the building complex. He was headed towards the lab which he knew held the gear for mind transportation into their huge computers that quite literally supported worlds within them.  _

_ “You’re trying the new update today in the project, right?” Inquired the dark haired male. With a nod of confirmation, he continued, “well I have  amazing  news for you, man. I’ll be joining you today!”  _

_ Clay snorted in disbelief, but the look on Nick’s face was genuine. “I’m serious, dude! We’ve only just mastered multi-person worlds and I’ve been getting really good at the project. I wanna show off for you! Maybe we can share a smooch if I impress you enough.”  _

_ “You’re so weird.” Clay chuckled, elbowing his friend, amused. “But it’s good to hear that you’ve been playing more.” That sentence caused Nick’s eyebrows to furrow slightly, but if the male had wanted to say something, he refrained from doing so. And Clay wasn't one to ask on those subjects.  _

_ “You haven’t gotten any…” He hadn’t even had to finish his sentence before Nick shook his head sympathetically. _

_ “No, it’s only you. Dave still hasn’t figured out why you’re experiencing those. It could be permanent damage to your brain, though. He might have to pull you out of the project.” _

_ “He’ll have to pry my cold, dead body out of it.” Clay joked lightly, but Nick did not laugh. _

_ “Yeah, man.”  _


	2. It's Not A Game

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dream finds an escape, but he can't seem to find himself. What haunts his memory? Is this Virtual World really a trap?, or is it a cage?

Dream didn’t understand. 

How was Sapnap finding him?

It was the fourth time that he ducked away from Sapnap’s quick sword swing, swearing to himself as the blade scraped against his hoodie, cutting the soft material open. 

“Sapnap!” The male swore, grabbing his own stone sword from a miniaturized slot on his right forearm. It expanded instantly and he did not hesitate to swing the sword right at Sapnap. With a surprised yell, the male stumbled back, giving Dream his chance to escape. 

Staggering forwards, he pushed his way through the underbrush of the forest. He needed to get iron if he wanted to rival the other male. 

There had been no sign of Sapnap for quite awhile now, and that was only adding to the blond’s nerves. It was scarily silent in this world, and the light banter that once comforted Dream was now reduced to glares and fighting. 

Abruptly, a voice cut through the air, causing the male to nearly jump out of his skin,

“You know, Dream, I do have a little surprise for you the next time we encounter.” The loud voice in his ears nearly caused the male to stumble into a ravine he was passing. He stopped, looking around rapidly. There was no sign of the male who he had just heard so prominently. With a quiet exhale, Dream once more opened the grey code box, using his pointer finger to scroll along. 

Ah. There was an option. It was new to this project, most likely the ‘update’ he had come in here thinking he would be testing. It allowed a public noise channel to sound in people’s ears if you wanted to communicate from far places. The only problem is that everybody can hear it. So if there were more than two people, you couldn’t exactly send a long-distance personal message. 

It says that there should be a button to activate the channel right behind his.. Aha! With a click, the blond temporarily heard his own breathing doubled back at him before the feedback settled down. Bringing his hand away from his right ear, he inhaled soundlessly.

“What is the surprise?” Dream’s voice was almost monotonous, holding back the slight edge of fear that was crawling along his spine. He looked through the ravine, spotting a small crevice which he could stand on. Hopping down, he reached across his arm, bringing out a stone pickaxe and beginning to mine into the stone wall. 

“Why would I tell you?” The voice of Sapnap countered indignantly, while in the background Dream could hear the pained noises of a zombie burning in sunlight. It was still a weird experience, having a foreign sound inside his head. A gasp left the dark-haired male, causing Dream to look out of his little hole, gaze trailing around warily. He had to be close. 

“Oh, you’re done.” Came Sapnap’s excited voice, “you’re literally dead. I have so many surprises for you.”  _ That’ll be fun.  _ The male thought bitterly, putting his pickaxe away and bringing out a slice of bread, lifting his ceramic mask a bit to take a bite while sifting through the miniature inventory on his arm. He had an idea that could buy him some time. 

“Oh, I’m gonna have a fun time with you~” Sapnap giggled maniacially, “hehe-”

“Oh my god.” If Dream hadn’t known any better, he would’ve thought that this was simply a game between two competitive friends, and the other’s more  _ dumb  _ humor had come out. 

Maybe it did. 

“Hehe- yes! You’re so done!” The male laughed, sounding comparable to an excited kindergartner. His intentions were not very lighthearted, though. “You’re so- you don’t understand how  _ dead _ you are. You better get full iron armor right now, otherwise you are dead.” 

He was just repeating phrases he had already said, which lowered Dream’s morale by quite a lot. His friend was sounding very confident, and very enthusiastic. Wringing his hands together and gripping tightly onto the stone pickaxe which he had brought back out, the male was beginning to doubt his plan. What did Sapnap have? It couldn’t be  _ that  _ dangerous, right? He once more looked through his inventory, tugging out two blocks of sandstone from an earlier visit to a desert. He placed them over the entrance of his hole, his nose scrunching lightly as he looked all around himself inside the pitch black room. Now, it was a waiting game.

During his time sitting in the stone hole, Dream had been looking through the code, even trying to edit it. A lot of the code had too strong of firewalls for him to even attempt penetrating.

..Sapnap would’ve laughed at that. 

Both males in this time had turned off the public channel. What was the point of making conversation with the person you were trying to kill?

There were smaller bits of code that did not have strong defenses, but Dream found them to be useless for aid. Except… that was interesting. The male sat up, although he couldn’t do the action very well in the cramped space he had put himself in. 

giveItems

With brisk tapping, and a concentrated gaze, he was able to break in, and remove Sapnap’s enchanted diamond gear. It would automatically delete itself at his next death. A shaky breath escaped the blond, and at the same time he heard the digging of dirt. Quickly folding in the box, it disappeared and he pressed against the sandstone wall, listening more closely. There was one chance at this, or he would surely die. The public channel crackled to life, and he hesitantly turned his on as well.

“So-” came Sapnap’s voice, calm and controlled, “did you go across the ocean?”

“I did.” Dream answered disheartenedly, scanning the pale yellow material miserably. 

“What biome are you in?” The male asked.

“I am in a…” he hesitated, staring at the sandstone, before answering, “desert biome.” There was caution in his voice.

Sapnap only laughed, “haha, nice lie. How long does it take for you to look at the biome you’re in?” A wheeze left Dream at that statement, both males letting out laughs together at the horrid attempt of fibbing he had done. 

“A long time,” Dream giggled, hearing footsteps above him. He knew all too well that there were only two possible outcomes of the situation that was rapidly approaching.

When he heard the footsteps fade away and a sudden confused noise leave Sapnap, Dream broke down the sandstone, peeking outside. Perhaps now, he could figure out how the male always found him. 

“Wait, what?” Came Sapnap’s bewildered voice, “what? You’re behind me.” He had figured that out so quickly, the blond was astonished. “How?” Looking up the ravine towards the blue sky, he waited. 

“What did- what did you do?” Stuttered his confused friend. Well, actually, he wasn't exactly his friend anymore, was he? A familiarized pain that he had felt for awhile now burst fresh in his chest, his heart aching. 

“What did you do?” the male repeated, his pitch rising. “You made a loop-de-loop, didn’t you?” Dream didn’t respond, backing away into his hole when he once again heard footsteps that only grew closer. 

Sapnap was somehow tracking him. He would have to look through the code once again to see if he could disable that on a later date. 

“What do you mean?” The blond finally asked, he figured playing dumb was his best bet to get his plan in motion. 

“You made a loop-de-loop.” 

“I made no loop-de-loop.” He responded honestly, fighting a smile that was threatening his face. They were being unnecessarily childish, and it was a nice change to the cold and murderous tones. 

“You hit me with the loop-de-loop, didn’t you?” Sapnap accused. Dream heard the male right above him, and he held his breath, looking out his hole.

_ Please, oh please. _ The male begged silently. 

“What?  _ No- _ you’re in this ravine?” Sapnap asked incredulously, and he heard the thud of the male jumping down right onto the crevice Dream had used to make his hole. 

Now. 

Looking out, he saw Sapnap staring down into the ravine with wide, confused eyes. Trailing his finger along his forearm, he brought out a stone axe and charged, slamming it into Sapnap’s back. 

“Wh-” The male began to turn around, but it was too late. He had already fallen back, and was only able to get a glimpse of Dream as the male darted away. “ _ WHAT?!”  _

Rambunctious laughter escaped the blond, and he did not stop running, even as a message appeared in the corner of his vision stating that Sapnap had died.

His laughter only became louder, putting Sapnap’s insane giggling from earlier to shame. His overwhelming relief and amazement that his plan had actually worked caused the blond to be a  _ bit _ delirious. Tears gathered at the corners of his eyes, and he couldn’t help but celebrate despite knowing this battle was far from over. 

Dream’s laughter died down as he jumped along the ravine and made his way out, taking a boat from his inventory and placing it on the water of a nearby ocean. They had traveled far, and he doubted Sapnap had set a spawn point. With a crackle, said male turned off the public channel, Dream doing the same with a smug smile. 

He was pretty great at this game, wasn't he?

_ “It’s NOT a game!”  _ Snapped a voice from Dream’s memory, and the male froze, his grin falling. 

_ “Grow up, Clay.”  _

With a new solemnity in the air, the male climbed into his spruce boat, rowing far out into the ocean, before silently pulling up the code box, and looking for a way to escape project M1N3, C4A7T. 

And boy, did he get results. 

In every experiment, you always have to put a failsafe. That chunk of code that prevented anybody from leaving? It had one of those, yeah. Except, it was probably meant for Sapnap  _ after  _ he had killed Dream. The coders, the  _ idiots _ that Dream knew hadn’t deciphered the pull potential of the project, had most likely expected Sapnap to succeed in killing Dream immediately: for the failsafe worked with anyone, he found out. 

This world was coded to reset after the beating of a brand new realm known as ‘The End’. It held a ‘final boss’, that once killed, counteracted the code that prevented people from leaving. It was put into intervals of six. So once Dream had defeated six of these end realms, he could leave. He could escape. 

He could put the person who trapped him in here in jail for a long time. That would mean putting Sapnap in jail too, but after what had happened, he wouldn’t complain. 

There were structures underground known as strongholds, which held portals that needed to be unlocked using eyes of ender. You could only make eyes of ender out of ender pearls and blaze powder.

He had to go to the nether. 

With an exhale, Dream leaned back in his boat. A wave of nausea had hit him, but he did not have motion sickness. Just a fear of heights. Falling sucked. He knew how to escape, he knew that with each End Realm beaten, they would get a new seed and lose all their tools. Both of them would. They would also spawn together.

His breathing quickened and he lifted his arm to rest it over his mask, sweat trickling down his temples. It felt like his entire body was throbbing, but he knew he wasn't currently injured. Maybe some food-

His arm fell to his side limply and he stared up into the blue sky, which he knew was as real as the sky in the ‘real world’. Both worlds were just created by different means. Their world matter, this world numbers. 

_ It’s real.  _

He thought between panting breaths, black creeping up on the edges of his vision.

_ This is all so real.  _

_ And I’m in it. _

_ … Right? _

His gaze trailed to the sun which shined down brightly.

_ That’s the sun. _

He thought.

_ That’s everybody’s sun. That’s a real sun.  _

_ Am I missing something?  _

_ I must be.  _

In the corner of his vision, bright yellow text appeared, signalling something small.

Small, like a snowball rolling down a hill. 

Just before the sun went black, the sky went black, and everything else went black. There it was,

**_GeorgeNotFound has joined._ **

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The ending of this chapter might have seemed a little confusing. What's happening to Dream?  
> But hey! George has arrived :)


End file.
